Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - REPLAY： When Christians Don’t Care, Society Suffers ｜ Guest： Andrew T. Walker

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Hope everyone is having a great day, a great week so far.

00:00:16.320 Today I am talking to Andrew Walker. He is a Christian ethics professor. He also worked

00:00:24.320 at World Magazine where I also write. He is an associate dean at the School of Theology at the

00:00:31.920 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as well. And he has so much wisdom when it comes to Christian

00:00:39.300 ethics and how Christians should be engaging with the culture and with the political realm.

00:00:46.620 And so he's going to tell us today, how do we balance not trusting too much in politics and

00:00:53.580 putting our hope too much in politics while also realizing it's an important world for us to

00:00:58.700 engage in and for us to understand. So without further ado, here is my friend, Andrew T. Walker.

00:01:09.900 Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. For those who may not know, can you tell us who you are and

00:01:15.120 what you do? Sure. My name is Andrew Walker, and I'm a professor of Christian ethics at the Southern

00:01:21.780 Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and then also serve as managing editor of the new

00:01:29.820 project of World Opinions, who is led by Dr. Albert Muller, who's the president of my institution.

00:01:36.400 And then I also serve as a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center based in Washington, D.C.

00:01:41.580 as well. But I currently call Louisville, Kentucky home, and I'm very privileged to do what I get to do

00:01:48.220 for my calling, which is to write and teach pastors and to train up individuals in the moral witness of

00:01:58.160 the Christian faith. And how have you become a public voice on the things that you talk about?

00:02:03.420 You're a professor, so that obviously puts you in front of an audience, but now you have a pretty

00:02:08.320 large audience. So how did you come into this world of political and cultural public commentary?

00:02:15.300 That's a good question. I would say it's almost a result of there just being very few people willing

00:02:23.900 to step into the arena. You know, Ali, I know you know this, when you hear the statistics about

00:02:29.180 millennials and kind of the bad state of their biblical theological literacy and their willingness

00:02:36.860 to step into the arena, what that ends up doing is creating a smaller number of people who are willing

00:02:43.460 to potentially burn down their reputation and their credibility to say what needs to be said.

00:02:51.880 And so really, I don't know. It's really the fact that I'm overly that gifted. It could be the fact

00:02:58.820 that I'm perhaps bravely or naively prepared to enter into the arena and to say things that I think need

00:03:08.480 to be said. And that's not just because I want to be correct and right, but because as Christians,

00:03:16.760 we believe that what is right is ultimately for our good. And so what we are talking about in the

00:03:23.600 public square, it's not mere sectarian truths. This is not about us being vindicated. Ultimately,

00:03:30.360 Christ is the one who vindicates. But if we love our neighbor, one of the very practical ways we're going

00:03:36.320 to love our neighbor is to say what is true for our neighbor and what is true about our society as

00:03:41.960 well. And I have a few questions within your answer or from your answer that I want to ask. But first,

00:03:47.580 I want to back up a little bit. How would you summarize Christian ethics? What is it that you

00:03:53.060 teach as a professor? Sure. That's a good question. I would say Christian ethics is a branch of moral

00:04:00.480 theology. And it's effectively, sometimes I like to call it applied Christology, because what we're trying

00:04:07.740 to do is live a life patterned after Jesus Christ and the revelation of Jesus Christ. So obviously that

00:04:15.560 means that's going to impact our day-to-day conduct and interactions with the world. So we want to model

00:04:22.640 and pattern our life after the person of Christ. But then also we understand that Christian ethics is

00:04:28.660 bigger than just pure imitation. And I'm not trying to downplay the significance of imitation.

00:04:35.320 But when we look at passages of scripture, like in John chapter 1 and Colossians chapter 1,

00:04:40.320 what we understand is that Christ is at the center of the universe. In fact, in the Greek,

00:04:47.220 he is referred to as the Logos, which means he is the divine cosmic ordering principle of the universe.

00:04:54.320 So that means that implicates every single thing about how we see the world. So Christian ethics 0.98

00:05:02.200 is really an issue of Christian worldview. So how am I called to relate to my world, to my role as a

00:05:11.820 citizen, to my role as a husband and a father in light of the revelation of Christ that we get from

00:05:19.080 scripture? And for those who say, you know, Christians really don't need to be messing around 0.99

00:05:24.940 with these culture wars. We don't need to be so caught up in politics. I think evangelicals in

00:05:30.820 particular are sometimes accused of idolizing politics, of getting too caught up in these

00:05:37.520 political and culture wars. How do we as Christians balance that? We obviously don't want to put our

00:05:44.760 trust in politicians or our hope in politicians or even in any kind of political future while

00:05:51.280 realizing, as you said, we do have an obligation to our neighbor. And one of the ways, one of the

00:05:56.600 ways we can love our neighbor is not only speaking truth, but also by participating in the political

00:06:02.860 process that we are free to participate in in the United States. We say on this podcast almost every

00:06:08.600 episode, politics matter because policy matters because people matter. Politics affects policy,

00:06:13.620 policy affects people. So that is one of the ways that we care about people. But, you know, we do as

00:06:20.600 conservative Christians, we do diverge from progressive Christians who think that activism is a form of

00:06:25.580 sanctification, who actually believe that they're going to be able to accomplish some kind of heavenly

00:06:30.540 utopia here on earth through their political activism. So I guess what I'm asking is what is the

00:06:37.960 Christian biblical way to look at how we interact with these political cultural issues without idolatry,

00:06:44.780 but also we don't want to be apathetic either? Goodness. Well, so I have a whole class I teach on

00:06:50.760 political theology, which is dedicated to that simple question. There is so much there. Let me just kind

00:06:56.940 of maybe scratch at the surface. One of the things I would say is we need to ask ourselves, what is the

00:07:04.340 nature of politics? What does it mean to live in a political community? So that's a theological

00:07:12.380 question. So government has been given in this particular age, as you said, not to bring about

00:07:20.980 political utopia. When you look at Romans chapter 13, 1 Peter 2, and in fact I would actually go all

00:07:28.620 the way back to Genesis chapter 9 with the Noahic Covenant, what we see fundamentally as the purpose of

00:07:35.280 government is to exercise preservative justice. So that means government is a positive good. It's not

00:07:44.400 something to run away from. That government is one of the instruments where fallen individuals

00:07:50.340 are cooperating with in order to allow competing interests and often conflicted interests to

00:07:57.640 figure out ways to peaceably live together in a fractious, fragmented moment like our own. So if we

00:08:05.000 go back to Genesis chapter 3, because we ideally would love to have stayed in Genesis 1 and 2, but we

00:08:11.460 didn't stay there. So Genesis 3 enters in, which means sin, decay, fallenness. We then get to Genesis

00:08:18.260 chapter 9, which is what most scholars would look to as kind of the very beginnings of what we would

00:08:25.660 understand as kind of the reciprocal or retributive understandings of justice. We see that God is

00:08:32.660 concerned with maintaining the contours of this creation, and he's interested in maintaining the

00:08:39.220 contours of this creation. One, I would say because he loves this creation. Two, he maintains the contours

00:08:47.700 or the stage or platform of this creation because ultimately it was going to be that platform that

00:08:53.480 would ultimately bring Christ onto the scene when we get to the New Testament. And so one of the ways

00:09:00.280 we manage living in a fallen age is to provide governing authorities to help us work out these

00:09:07.760 differences. You know, when we think about the nature of statecraft, Scripture doesn't really give us

00:09:14.700 any one particular formula for what a government ought to look like. So hypothetically, monarchy,

00:09:22.460 parliamentary systems, democratic and republican-style systems, those are all legitimate. What all

00:09:29.340 governments are called to do is to pursue justice. And as a Christian, we would look at passages like

00:09:36.640 Romans chapter 2, 14, and 15, which is kind of a classical passage on the teaching of the natural law

00:09:42.680 that states that God has placed, effectively, eternity and a longing for justice inside the human

00:09:50.240 heart. And one of the ways that we commiserate and work together in society is to pass just laws and

00:09:57.860 then install people into power. We understand our good individuals and trustworthy who can then create

00:10:06.880 and carry out these laws on our behalf. But I want to dwell on something that you just said that I

00:10:12.220 thought was really important. And that's not to invest too much into politics, but at the same time,

00:10:21.000 not then minimizing politics either. It is to understand kind of this paradoxical reality

00:10:27.020 that in a fallen age, government is absolutely necessary. And so government is therefore obligated

00:10:33.760 to recognize what is true about the universe, while at the same time, recognizing that there

00:10:39.940 are limitations to what the government is actually able to bring about. I'm a Baptist. And so we have

00:10:47.140 a strong tradition of religious liberty. And so I don't want the government meddling in kind of

00:10:53.040 intricate matters of theology. That doesn't mean that we keep religion and politics separate. That's

00:10:59.900 actually impossible. But it means we keep these spheres of church and state kind of jurisdictionally

00:11:06.200 separate in order to make sure that their callings and their jurisdictions and their competencies are

00:11:11.620 all properly borne out respective to their callings. But if we love our neighbor, one of the most very

00:11:19.060 practical ways we're going to love our neighbor is to codify laws that seek to do good to our neighbors.

00:11:26.900 And one of the real ironies of this particular moment that we're living in is we have a lot

00:11:32.140 of Christians who are saying, government is bad. Don't place your trust in government. Well, 0.98

00:11:37.060 at the same time, these Christians are the same Christians who are saying, pursue social justice,

00:11:41.780 do good to your neighbor. And I want to say to that, yes and amen. But the problem though is,

00:11:45.940 if you're going to actually hope to bring about justice and truth, that is necessarily a call to

00:11:52.680 the government, not away from the government. I want to go a little deeper into the distinction

00:11:59.020 that you just made between intermingling or allowing religion to influence law and the intermingling of

00:12:08.320 church and state. So we're against, you know, we're for the separation of church and state. But it is 0.84

00:12:17.040 impossible, as you said, to separate religion and politics or religion and law. I think that's a

00:12:23.400 very important point. Can you explain more about what you mean? Sure. One of the real, I would say,

00:12:30.980 fictions that our age kind of trades in is this idea that you can separate a person's ultimate

00:12:40.260 values and their worldview from how they vote and how they're going to want to see those values

00:12:48.040 lived out. And so this is really kind of, we're living in the after effects of a scholar named

00:12:53.340 John Rawls. And John Rawls said, because we're living in this diverse society, we have to figure out

00:12:59.840 kind of a common moral discourse that allows us to communicate with one another without automatically

00:13:06.600 deferring to religion. And so what he said effectively was to keep religion out of it,

00:13:11.660 you have to operate on secular terms only. Well, the problem, though, is in his attempt to

00:13:18.680 argue for secular neutrality, you know this, Allie, what that really does is smuggle in

00:13:26.040 secular neutrality or secularism as the real actual morality and system that's behind the debate.

00:13:36.100 And it's not neutral.

00:13:37.580 And it's not neutral at all. Absolutely. And so what secularism has done wrong is to sever

00:13:47.620 the sacred from the public. Now, notice, I didn't say sacred and the political because there is one

00:13:58.160 sense in which government is a secular enterprise. And a part of that means recovering a healthy

00:14:04.180 understanding of secular. Secular in a traditional historic Christian understanding doesn't mean

00:14:09.900 anti-religion. Rather, secular refers to only those temporal institutions that are not designed

00:14:17.220 to be present into the eschatological age, which we would say government is one of those functions.

00:14:22.120 So government is a secular institution, but that doesn't mean that it's cut off or immune

00:14:28.540 from influence from individuals who have been formed and cultivated and habituated by the traditions

00:14:36.000 that have formed them. So there's an interesting paradox here, especially as a Baptist evangelical

00:14:42.320 Christian here, is I want religion intricately involved in the public space. I have friends who

00:14:51.000 are legislators who are evangelical Christians. I want more of that in public office. What I would not 1.00

00:14:57.780 want these individuals then doing is to say, well, well, then government is only there for Christians

00:15:04.020 and government is only interpretable or intelligible exclusively on Christian grounds. And so therefore,

00:15:11.660 if you're not a Christian, you're a second class citizen. That's not what I'm saying at all when we

00:15:15.480 talk about secularism. Rather, it's helping us to capture what I think is the real brilliance of our

00:15:24.240 founding is our founders understood that this apparatus of government is really just a tool

00:15:31.660 and a vehicle. And the tool and vehicle is only as useful as the people who are using the tool are

00:15:39.940 virtuous. And one of the ways that we get virtue from an American founding understanding is from the

00:15:46.160 vehicle of religion. And so in a time where we're trying to say keep religion and politics separate

00:15:54.480 from each other, I think that's completely disjunctive from what we see is actually the founding

00:16:00.360 vision for our country. I mean, Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s, what does he say makes America unique

00:16:06.080 from all other countries that he's been in? He says it's effectively because America is a nation with

00:16:13.080 the soul of a church. And so rather than taking our cues and our understanding of all things from

00:16:20.620 the government in the sense that the government does not hand down, it doesn't determine what is

00:16:26.980 true. Government recognizes what is true. And therefore, it's incumbent upon us to put people

00:16:34.340 into office who have that limited understanding of the government's purpose.

00:16:38.720 And that debate gets more and more complicated as we move into, or I wouldn't say we move into,

00:16:45.300 we are firmly in kind of this post-truth, post-modern world where we are asking, what is

00:16:50.860 truth? You said that the function of the government is to pursue just laws. One of the ways that we

00:16:56.200 love our neighbor is to speak truth and also to pursue policy that we know is good for them. But what

00:17:01.620 it comes down to is, what is good? What is just? What is true? You and I believe that there is a

00:17:08.460 God who created all of those things, that he has graciously shown us, both through general and

00:17:13.620 special revelation, what truth is, what justice is, what goodness is, and what we can pursue.

00:17:19.400 How do we debate these things? And maybe we don't. Maybe that's kind of what you were just saying.

00:17:24.200 How do we debate these things from a non-strictly Christian theological perspective

00:17:28.920 in the public square for someone who wants to be persuaded that abortion is wrong. We can list

00:17:38.640 all of the scientific facts about fetal development. We can try to come from a humanistic,

00:17:46.040 moral perspective. But at the end of the day, you and I believe that abortion is wrong because that

00:17:51.380 human being is made in the image of God. And God made that human being. That human being has a soul

00:17:55.820 and value. So at the end of the day, even as we might be able to persuade people from a secular

00:18:02.480 perspective, the motivation behind our persuasion is that, you know, that child is made in the Imago 1.00

00:18:09.760 Dei. So maybe my question is, should we try to separate the arguments about what is good and right

00:18:17.480 and true from the Bible when we're in the public square? Or should we just say, look, there's a God who

00:18:23.360 created all of this. There's a God who defines all of this. There's a God who originates justice and

00:18:28.960 goodness. And we cannot even really have a full conversation about those things without talking

00:18:35.000 about where they come from.

00:18:37.340 Gosh, I love that question. And that's, again, central to the class I teach in political theology.

00:18:43.600 One of the things I would say here is Christians would say we believe in a common morality,

00:18:49.800 morality, but there is no such thing as a neutral morality. So by virtue of the fact that we have

00:18:56.560 been created with reason, God instills some baseline moral foundation inside the heart of every human

00:19:05.220 being. So there can be common morality, but there is no moral neutrality in the sense that we would say

00:19:12.560 that truth is coming from all different directions. No, that's not what I'm saying. Truth ultimately is

00:19:19.100 grounded in the triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who then manifests himself and reveals

00:19:24.880 himself in Scripture. But then as you helpfully and rightly noted, and I should say as a side note,

00:19:31.480 Alibeth, in your writing, I've appreciated that you're talking about general revelation

00:19:35.520 as much as you are. And this is the idea that God has communicated to us in two ways, both through

00:19:42.520 the Bible, but then also through creation. And so individuals, when they're out in creation,

00:19:48.620 by looking at design patterns, the law of consequence, they understand that there is

00:19:56.760 something ultimately behind the foundations of this universe. And in a classical sense,

00:20:02.840 we would call that being God. So special revelation and general revelation are two tools that we have at

00:20:09.680 our disposal. But when you're thinking about kind of the practical ways of how would you actually argue

00:20:15.280 for what Christians believe on kind of hot button cultural issues, one of the things I always say

00:20:21.840 is it's not an either or. In many ways, how we argue is likened to what is the best golf club to use

00:20:31.040 relative to the swing. And so really, that's a prudential issue that we have to wrestle with

00:20:36.460 on fact specific and context specific circumstances that we find ourselves in. I often use the example

00:20:44.500 of what would I do if I were a legislator on the floor of Congress? And there was a bill that came

00:20:51.380 up that was a pro-life bill. I would argue that bill in several different horizons. I would argue on

00:20:59.920 the basis that, listen, political societies need babies. Babies are good things for societies because

00:21:07.000 we need voters, we need taxpayers. And so killing a population of individuals is wrong as a sociological

00:21:12.960 and political matter. I would then argue probably on the grounds of natural law and a conscience issue

00:21:18.720 that life is a basic good. And so therefore, we should never pursue any policy or law that would

00:21:26.280 terminate innocent life. That's unlawful. It's unethical. It's at the very opposite end of what

00:21:33.540 you would consider to be a just system of government. And then third, I would simply end my imagined floor

00:21:41.300 speech by simply saying, you know, my fellow legislators, I come here to you today, someone who cares passionately

00:21:50.260 about these issues, both as an American, as a human, but fundamentally as someone who is creating

00:21:56.560 the image of God, because I believe every single human being is creating the image of God. And I learned

00:22:01.900 that ultimately from scripture. But what I understand is that the God who has created us in his image

00:22:06.980 has instilled within all people a longing for justice. And so what I would say is pass pro-life

00:22:14.740 legislation, because this honors both creation, it honors humanity, but fundamentally it honors God

00:22:21.060 and his word as well. God's glory and our good are always going to be inextricably intertwined. And so

00:22:26.520 while it's not always a simple argument, sometimes it takes some explaining and obviously some persuading,

00:22:36.080 it is an, or maybe I should say, it's not always an easy argument, but it is a simple argument. It is

00:22:43.240 always pretty forthright. Now this gets a little bit more complicated when we're talking about the

00:22:49.140 issue of sexuality, of identity, of people's relationships. One question that I think a lot

00:22:56.040 of Christians have is how much influence should Christianity have over the law, which we've already

00:23:01.420 been discussing. But when it comes to homosexuality, when it comes to gay marriage, which is kind of just 0.72

00:23:07.160 a foregone conversation at this point. And even when it comes to some of the things that you have

00:23:13.060 been talking about, cohabitation, even no-fault divorce, some of these things that we really

00:23:18.720 don't discuss on the policy level anymore, should Christians even be thinking about this from a policy 0.96

00:23:25.020 perspective? Is it worth having a debate anymore about the legality of gay marriage? Or should

00:23:33.120 Christians really just try to persuade people personally when it comes to the importance of 1.00

00:23:40.560 biblical sexuality? Where's the line that we draw today? So I think regardless of how you think about

00:23:46.960 this in either a relational or policy bucket, first and foremost, Christians are called to be truthful

00:23:57.120 and to bear witness to the truth. And so I think that means in whatever domain or bucket you find

00:24:03.420 yourself in, you are obligated to speak truthfully. And you should never allow your speech to be

00:24:09.560 blurred or suppressed or drafted into things that you believe are immoral and wrong. Now, when we think

00:24:16.600 about gender and sexuality issues, I agree with you. It would be seemingly difficult right now to overturn

00:24:26.240 Obergefell because the direction our culture is going is not with Christians on this issue. But you know 0.90

00:24:33.540 what? I don't believe in the kind of progressive utopia of the right side of history and the wrong

00:24:41.040 side of history. We might have an issue right now where a particular policy is in place for a certain

00:24:49.440 period of time. And then later in a few decades, a couple hundred years, we might understand that

00:24:55.260 these policies have sowed destruction for our culture. And I'm not just talking about same-sex 0.98

00:25:02.580 marriage. I'm talking about no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce has been catastrophic on our 0.99

00:25:08.900 culture. And then you think about just the general rise of cohabitation and just the decline of marriage

00:25:15.740 right now in our general culture. I talk about this in my classes because it's hard to be aware of this

00:25:22.140 if you're not studying it. But Brad Wilcox, who's a friend of mine and a sociologist at the University

00:25:27.260 of Virginia, I think he would make the argument, based on his data, that marriage and family life

00:25:34.160 is in about the worst state it has ever been in in American history. And what he measures that by

00:25:41.040 is the fact that individuals are either not marrying, they're marrying at later ages, they're having fewer

00:25:48.400 children or not having children at all. And so what we have right now is just the decline overall of

00:25:55.580 kind of why you would enter family life in the first place. And in many ways, this is a, it's the

00:26:01.740 inversion of the creation order, and it's an inversion of the cultural mandate that we see from Genesis

00:26:06.380 chapter one. But, you know, when I worked at the Heritage Foundation, one of the reasons I worked on the

00:26:12.460 marriage issue with my friend Ryan Anderson was because we understood that, excuse me, societies need

00:26:19.500 healthy marriages because society is nothing else but the total aggregate number of families living in

00:26:27.020 that given place, that given locality. So if you have a political community where 50% of the marriages

00:26:33.460 are ending in divorce, you're going to have human suffering as a result. One of the statistics that we

00:26:39.780 know is true is that the greatest indicator of childhood poverty in our country right now is

00:26:45.600 whether or not that child is raised in a household with a married mother and father. So we're all about

00:26:51.980 social justice in this age, right? That's the anthem and the banner that everyone is flying. Well,

00:26:56.500 here's the thing. If you really want to pursue social justice, which means people having proper

00:27:01.740 relationships to themselves, their family, and their social order, and to God, that means telling the truth

00:27:07.440 about what family is and who created family, which is God. And so if you're asking me to come back full

00:27:14.620 circle how we began this interview, why do I want to tell the truth about marriage? Because ultimately I

00:27:20.940 love my neighbor and I cannot sit back and allow society to redefine institutions that are absolutely

00:27:28.160 necessary to its stability and its foundation and see those institutions impaled and then be indifferent

00:27:35.800 about them if I see individuals being denied the love and care and environment that comes with

00:27:43.380 experiencing the differentiated love of a mother and father. And so this is a huge cultural conversation

00:27:50.680 because you can't sever that issue from the fact that we're now living in an age where toxic masculinity

00:27:59.920 is a thing. So these are the downplaying of gender distinctions in our society is going to wreak havoc 1.00

00:28:07.320 on our society because at the end of the day, it blurs those categories that God has placed in creation

00:28:13.560 for our good. I had a guest on my show a few weeks ago. Her name is Katie Faust and she has an organization

00:28:20.360 called Them Before Us. And she's raising a lot of awareness about this issue, about how

00:28:25.040 not just no-fault divorce, but also much of the surrogacy industry, the redefinition of marriage

00:28:32.160 and family and gender has disproportionately hurt children. And as you said, people who say that they

00:28:38.280 care for social justice and care for the marginalized and the oppressed very often don't realize that these

00:28:43.860 issues that have been pushed forward with really without much thought or study or discretion whatsoever

00:28:49.660 are going to affect children. So there's that practical part there that you mentioned that kids

00:28:56.060 who often grow up without a dad, they're more likely to be depressed. They have higher rates of teen

00:29:00.980 pregnancy, teen delinquency, dropping out of high school, poverty. And so there are a lot of practical,

00:29:07.740 tangible issues there that are at stake when we are encouraging divorce or incentivizing, in some cases,

00:29:14.320 single parenthood and all of that. But also there is the theological. She said a couple things that I

00:29:20.340 had never really thought about when it comes to the importance of kids having a really a right to a

00:29:27.100 mom and a dad is that you are forcing these kids to disobey the first commandment with a promise that we

00:29:35.320 are to honor our father and mother. The Bible charges us to care for the fatherless. Well, if we are

00:29:40.800 redefining the family and saying that, you know, so-called marriage without a husband or without

00:29:47.320 a dad is just as good for kids, you are forcing those kids into fatherlessness. We are forcing those

00:29:54.440 kids into a form of oppression, something that God defines as oppression. And I think, I mean, I didn't

00:30:01.580 even think about that as someone who understands the theological and practical importance of marriage.

00:30:07.160 But unfortunately, I think I see a lot of Christian conservatives thinking that the whole marriage

00:30:12.420 and family issue is a losing issue that we really shouldn't talk about anymore. Let's just talk about

00:30:19.060 capitalism. Let's just talk about small government. Let's just talk about anti-socialism, which of course,

00:30:24.140 I think all is important. But to me, it just seems like you're not going to get those issues. You're not

00:30:31.280 going to get the other conservative issues without remembering and upholding that incubator of

00:30:40.120 liberty, that foundation of the values that we hold dear. If someone doesn't realize that your

00:30:46.800 rights are inherent, they don't come from the government, that your primary caretaker are your

00:30:53.140 parents, your primary authority, and your primary disciplers are your parents,

00:30:58.020 then they do go to the culture, to politicians, to outside influencers to get those values. And

00:31:07.400 then we lose all the rest of the stuff that conservatives want to uphold. So I don't know.

00:31:11.900 I do think a lot of conservative Christians are scared to talk about these issues because they do

00:31:15.780 seem divisive and people are tired of being called bigots.

00:31:18.520 I mean, listen, everything you just said, I couldn't agree more with. You think about what are

00:31:26.580 those first things, those permanent things, issues that we have to get right. The family is one of

00:31:35.140 them. I would put family as kind of the bedrock foundation upon which the rest of society comes to

00:31:42.240 be built on top of. When we are building a foundation on sand, which is what we're now doing,

00:31:49.840 the rest of society is going to be crippled as well. And I'll just end by stating something here.

00:31:56.540 You mentioned about denying children access to a mother and a father. This is very unpopular to say,

00:32:03.620 but you all remember the video probably, or the photo of Pete Buttigieg with his spouse in a hospital

00:32:14.580 bed with their newborn children. Well, you know, it's celebrated on social media. It's getting all of

00:32:22.220 the retweets celebrating the goodness of life and family, which we want to celebrate life. Absolutely.

00:32:30.180 But you know, what's really fascinating is they took that picture inside a hospital room,

00:32:36.520 sitting on a hospital bed where there was someone conspicuously absent, which was the mother.

00:32:44.240 And so while society is applauding and celebrating that image, I saw that and thought, okay, well,

00:32:51.420 what law and public policy has now coordinated to do is to deny those children loving,

00:33:00.180 access to a mother. So we have cut out intentionally by design because of public policy,

00:33:09.200 the opportunity for those children to have a mom. That is not justice. That is a disrespect to the

00:33:20.080 creation order that God has placed in our world. And we should lament the fact that any child

00:33:28.580 is not getting the love that they are entitled to and have a right to from a mother and a father.

00:33:35.160 Yep. Justice doesn't mean whatever people want it to mean. Justice is synonymous with righteousness.

00:33:40.920 And the one righteous one who created justice tells us what that looks like. And one of the

00:33:45.560 depictions of justice that we see is at the very beginning of the Bible, the creation of the family,

00:33:50.920 not just for his glory, but also for our good. Thank you for defending that so well. I think

00:33:55.960 you've given us a lot to chew on and I think have been able to boil down very clearly the Christian

00:34:06.580 position on a lot of controversial topics as you do so well consistently. Can you tell everyone how

00:34:11.540 they can find you, how they can support you? Yeah, I would say I'm mostly on Twitter. I'm

00:34:17.540 simply Andrew T. Walk. And I've got some books on Amazon. You know, shockingly, Amazon still sells

00:34:24.580 them. We'll see how much longer that happens. I have a second edition of my book on transgenderism

00:34:29.380 coming out in February. So we'll see if I follow suit like Ryan Anderson and get my book canceled.

00:34:35.460 So we'll see what happens. Let's hope not. Well, thank you so much, Andrew. I really appreciate

00:34:38.820 you coming on. Thanks, Alibeth.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 26, 2022

REPLAY： When Christians Don’t Care, Society Suffers ｜ Guest： Andrew T. Walker

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